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55 thoughts on “Meanwhile, At The National Stadium”

Irish people protest for the most bizarre things. A tiny €100 tax and they come out in force. 50c extra on your prescription or making pensioners on 100K pay for their medical care and you have mass rallies. Where were they went NAMA legislation was being debated?

It’s going to rise exponentially within the next few years, and is not going to go towards the improvement/maintenance of local amenities and services, which have largely been gutted/privatised in recent times. Just because some Government members have taken to making vague promises recently, that the charge may go towards public services (though they won’t talk specifically about which public services they’re meant to improve), be assured that the revenue is going to be used to paying off the Troika, bond vigilantes and whatever other loan sharks the Coalition do business with in the next few years.

I read in the Indo this morning Edna telling us how much property tax they pay in the UK.
As if this is justifies this poll tax – to pay for bankers screw ups. And now it seems to help pay for their “trad” bonuses.
He seems to forget that we seem to pay about twice as much for cars. Patronising C**t that he is.

As a resident of the UK I can confirm that we don’t pay any property tax. Does he mean council tax or maybe stamp duty? Neither of these are comparable so he’s talking through his hat whichever way you look at it.

It’d be a perfectly reasonable tax if the money was actually going to be used for the benefit of society. In Toronto, where I am now, the property taxes are way bigger and go to pay for public services, expansion of public transit options, etc.

Sadly, with 3.1 billion euro leaving the govt’s coffers at the end of March to pay off yet more Anglo debt, the notion that the household charge is anything other than a way to pay off unsecured bondholders and private bank losses is a joke.

Once we stop paying the debts that the state didn’t generate, then maybe there can be a reasonable discussion on raising money that will actually go to improving society.

+1.
Water charges will reduce peoples wasteful use of water and bring innovation in water saving technology which will in turn create employment. The present government has shown no creativity in this department.
This tax, however, will do nothing other than pay off another few yo yo s off an impossible and immoral debt that has been imposed on us.

Maybe the reason that people in this country are not big on protesting is because the second anyone takes a stand, there are a shower of c**ts who savagely turn on them. As Joyce said “Ireland is the old sow that eats her farrrow.” He was right.

Ireland played the game and lost. Now, if we want to stay in the game this is the price we pay.

The country is in the sh*tter, the state (us) needs the cash to pay for public services as the all the tax revenue is gone to pay people who played the game, lost but are getting their money back.

Some of the people who go to these protest meetings are deluded about the state of things.

We elected the Government. Their job is to rule in the best interests of the majority. Their job is ignore the waffle of the amateur economists on the street and make decisions based on the best advice possible. Clearly this isn’t the way it worked when Fianna Fail were in charge but I have trust that it’s being done right this time.

I paid the €100. I want Ireland to stay in the game, stay in the EU. We have a very inflated opinion of ourselves if we think we can go it alone. We live in globalised market, we’d be chewed top and spat out without our alliances in Europe.

As crooked as this situation is, it’s the only option and we will come out of it stronger with a few lessons learned. Maybe. Maybe not but it’s the course we’ve chosen (we, as in we that elected the government, and I don’t care if you day you didn’t vote for them – because you live in a democracy and you’re ruled by the majority) and I’ll leave the decisions to the people who’s job it to see the bigger picture, not those who job it is to snatch votes by telling people what they want to hear.

In fairness, that’s some pile of horseshite. What game exactly did we loose? You said it yourself – the money we’re paying is to pay people who lost in the market. Unsecured bondholders, people who made unwise gambles on Irish banks. They’re the ones who should be taking the pain.

3.1 billion at the end of the month, vs. about 140 million in the household charge? How about we don’t pay the 3.1 billion and instead use it to cover part of the deficit in our day-to-day spending.

The worst thing is that there are major structural problems in the Irish economy – the tax base needs to be readjusted (to provide certainty of income), the cost base needs to be brought under control (benchmarking, etc, needs to be gotten rid of), etc, but none of that can be done while we’re sending off billions out of the economy to investors who through their own lack of judgement on the soundness of the Irish economy, should have lost billions. Instead they’re taking it off the Irish people.

And this notion about just shutting up and trusting the government? That’s what got us into this mess in the 1st place. The lesson of the FF years is not to just trust a different government, it’s that we constantly need to examine what they’re doing, to keep a spotlight on their actions and to force them to change if they propose something that you do not in the best interests of the country. The issue is that people see their democratic job as 1 vote in 5 years, rather than constant engagement.

Too many deals in Irish politics are done in back rooms and without listening to all the views on the table. Engagement and activism are the lessons of the FF era, not more supine bowing before our elected overlords.

oh for god’s sake! ok let’s all stop paying taxes, bills, mortgages – that’ll show them!! show them what, exactly? that ireland will take vast sums of money from the eu, as we did for years – who do you think paid for roads, hospitals, free third level education etc… and then just refuse to pay our debts, here’s to the future, everything’s going to be fine, just so long as we follow the advice of amateur economists from the increasingly tedious left and the far-right SF…